Where Did the Road Go?

On this edition of the Mid-Week Podcast, we talk UFO's, we explore the depths of the phenomenon, how it is treated by mainstream science and why, skepticism and debunking, the views of researchers like John Keel, Carl Jung, and Jacques Vallee, and the role of perception and communication.We then take a turn and talk about the assassination of JFK, and what Micah finds the most interesting about it. You can find Micah online at micahhanks.com, gralienreport.com, and www.middletheory.com.

Just beyond the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK,Russ Baker discusses the likelihood of a lone gunman and what the evidence suggests. We also talk about the Boston Bombing, Michael Hastings, and the role of Alternative Media in our world. His Alternative News Site, WhoWhatWhy.com is an excellent example of excellence in news reporting.

Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative reporter with a track record for making sense of complex and little understood matters-and explaining it to elites and ordinary people alike, using entertaining, accessible writing to inform and involve.

Over the course of more than two decades in journalism, Baker has broken scores of major stories. Topics included: early reporting on inaccuracies in the articles of The New York Times’s Judith Miller that built support for the invasion of Iraq; the media campaign to destroy UN chief Kofi Annan and undermine confidence in multilateral solutions; revelations by George Bush’s biographer that as far back as 1999 then-presidential candidate Bush already spoke of wanting to invade Iraq; the real reason Bush was grounded during his National Guard days – as recounted by the widow of the pilot who replaced him; an article published throughout the world that highlighted the West’s lack of resolve to seriously pursue the genocidal fugitive Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, responsible for the largest number of European civilian deaths since World War II; several investigations of allegations by former members concerning the practices of Scientology; corruption in the leadership of the nation’s largest police union; a well-connected humanitarian relief organization operating as a cover for unauthorized US covert intervention abroad; detailed evidence that a powerful congressional critic of Bill Clinton and Al Gore for financial irregularities and personal improprieties had his own track record of far more serious transgressions; a look at the practices and values of top Democratic operative and the clients they represent when out of power in Washington; the murky international interests that fueled both George W. Bush’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns; the efficacy of various proposed solutions to the failed war on drugs; the poor-quality televised news program for teens (with lots of advertising) that has quietly seeped into many of America’s public schools; an early exploration of deceptive practices by the credit card industry; a study of ecosystem destruction in Irian Jaya, one of the world’s last substantial rain forests.

Baker has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice and Esquire and dozens of other major domestic and foreign publications. He has also served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. Baker received a 2005 Deadline Club award for his exclusive reporting on George W. Bush’s military record. He is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America (Bloomsbury Press, 2009); it was released in paperback as Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government and the Secret History of the Last Fifty Years. For more information on Russ’s work, see his sites, www.familyofsecrets.com and www.russbaker.com.

This night we will be talking to Scotty Roberts about his new book, co-authored with John Ward, The Exodus Reality. In this groundbreaking work, the authors reexamine humanity’s most enduring account of bondage, emancipation, and freedom. The Great Exodus is the story of how one man, empowered by divine epiphany, brought the mighty ancient kingdom of Egypt to its knees. The authors present two opposing, yet strangely interlaced historical accounts for the Exodus, naming the historical pharaohs and surprising candidates for the historical Moses. We discuss Scotty's theory, and we will have John on at the end of December to discuss his view. Visit Scotty's website at www.scottalanroberts.com.

SCOTT ALAN ROBERTS is a man of diverse interests and a fairly eclectic background. He is Founder and Publisher of INTREPID Magazine, a monthly journal focusing on Politics, Science, Culture, Conspiracy Theories and Unexplained Phenomena. He is the Founder of the Paradigm Symposium. He is an accomplished writer, public speaker, illustrator, historian, designer, theologian and stand up philosopher. Of Scot/Welsh descent, he was raised in an agnostic Christian home, with a communistic Jewish grandfather and a Ukrainian Orthodox stepfather and was mentored by an old stonemason throughout his early teen years. He attended Bible College and entered his Masters of Divinity program in theological seminary in a very conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical Christian academic setting. He joined the United States Marine Corp and eventually entered the ministry as a youth pastor. All of this was to prep him for the next thirty years, which he spent in advertising and publishing. Scotty’s first pieces of published artwork appeared on a plethora of dust jacket and cover designs for a small, Minneapolis‐based theological book publisher in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In and throughout his career, he has been involved in theatre and stage drama, and did a stint as a royal character at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, which lasted over fifteen years. Scotty attributes much of his stage presence and public speaking abilities to his years of interactive street theatre at the festival.

During a subsequent period of working in various ad agencies throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Scotty authored and illustrated a series of graphic novels, The Bloodlore Chronicles.

During the 1990s, Scotty owned The Uptown Marketing Group, a small advertising and marketing studio in the Minneapolis area. During this time he authored a number of newsletters and advertising campaigns, as well as servicing a list of illustration and design clientele.

Scotty is the author and illustrator of The Rollicking Adventures of Tam O’Hare (2007), an illustrated novel originally intended for 8‐14‐year‐old readers, but which found its greater readership with the college‐aged audience and older. He has also authored for New Page Books, The Rise and Fall of the Nephilm (2012) and The Secret History of the Reptilians (2013).

Scotty has written articles for TAPS ParaMagazine (the official publication of SyFy’s Ghost Hunters) and went on to become their Editor‐In‐Chief during 2009 and 2010.

He is a talented public speaker, and has been a featured lecturer with TAPS and Beyond Reality Events, as well as various other paranormal events between 2007 and 2012.

He is father to five children, and lives with his wife and family in rural Wisconsin. Being a native Minnesotan, Scotty considers himself a ‘stranger in a strange land’ filled with Green Bay Packers fans.

Aaron J Gulyas discusses his latest book, The Chaos Conundrum. In "The Chaos Conundrum," historian Aaron John Gulyas examines how the paranormal has intersected and influenced our culture in myriad ways, from the conspiracy beliefs of William Cooper and Exopolitics to the challenge that the stories of Gray Barker presented to our concept of self and time. He looks at the maelstrom of personalities, agendas, impressions, data, confusion, and contradictions that can be found in the world of the weird, and demonstrates how they have become an integral part of our lives, whether in the form of flying saucers, hauntings, religious revelations, psychic abilities, or dozens of other guises. Gulyas delves into the stories of the people who have attempted to create order out of the chaos. Along the way he recounts his own journey from enthusiastic believer in the "shadow government" and their underground bases to jaded academic skeptic, and then finally to someone who thinks there might just be something to the paranormal after all... but not what we have been led to expect or believe!

A teacher, historian, and writer (generally in that order), Gulyas received his BA in History from Hanover College in 1998 and promptly went to work for the state of Indiana assessing disability insurance claims. Wearing out his welcome in the civil service within a year or so, he shifted to the thrilling world of proofreading. Realizing he was only really good at history, he returned to school and was awarded an MA in United States History from Indiana University-Indianapolis in 2003. He then moved into teaching, eventually landing at Mott Community College, where he has taught since 2006.

Gulyas's first book, Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist: Contact Tales since the 1950s was published in May 2013 by McFarland Books. His newest book is The Chaos Conundrum, a collection of essays on the paranormal, religion, spirituality, an the atemporal, published by Redstar Books. In Fandom's Shadow, a 50th anniversary retrospective of Doctor Who, Fandom, and its relationship to geography and time, was published in September, 2013 by Deserted Moon Press.

He contributed the introduction to Posthuman Blues: Dispatches From a World on the Cusp of Terminal Dissolution, a collection of writings by the late Mac Tonnies edited by Paul Kimball.